Event Category: Musical performance

Tim Z. Hernandez in San Diego

Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025

Time: 7:30 p.m., PST

Where: Verbatim Books, 3793 30th St., San Diego, CA

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will read and sign books at Verbatim Books on March 8. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. He is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program. Special guests include families of Los Gatos airplane crash. Local folk musician Joel Rafael will play a few songs, and Alicia Coronado will also read from her latest work.

About the book:

In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.

They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.

Tim Hernandez Speaks at Los Gatos Plane Crash Memorial Events

Date: Friday, September 27, 2024

Time: 5 – 8 p.m., PST

Where: Coalinga College Auditorium, 300 Cherry Lane, Coalinga, CA

Date: Saturday, September 28, 2024

Time: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., PST

Where: Los Gatos Canyon, on Los Gatos Creek Road approximately 15 miles west of Derrick Ave., Coalinga, CA

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will speak at the Los Gatos Plane Crash Two-Day Memorial Event presented by The R.C. Baker Museum and Coalinga College. Beginning September 27, at the Coalinga College Auditorium, there will be food vendors and Mariachi in the Quad followed by a community presentation with Hernandez and special guests 6 – 7 p.m, concluding with a book signing 7 – 8 p.m. On September 28, at Los Gatos Canyon, the Crash Memorial Dedication will be held 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

About the book:

A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together.

Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”

Poet Valerie Martínez Reads from COUNT in Albuquerque

When: Sunday, April 30, 2023, 1 p.m.

Where: Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM

Valerie Martínez will read from her book-length poem, COUNT, with musical accompaniment from the world premiere of “As the Waters Began to Rise,” a vocal work composed by University of New Mexico’s Peter Gilbert. The event will take place at the Albuquerque Museum in partnership with the Museum Store.

The event is free and open to the public, sponsored by The City of Albuquerque Department of Arts & Culture. The first ten attendees who arrive after 12:30 p.m. will receive a free, signed edition of COUNT.

COUNT is a book-length, eco-poem that confronts the tragic reality of climate change. The book contains 43 sections of myth-gathering, accounts of climate devastation, personal narratives, descriptions of flora and fauna, references to works of eco-art, and evocations of children, so as to shed light on climate change. Martínez uses earth wisdom and culture to help guide readers through the crises.

The title comes from the book’s central metaphor—the process of counting: counting down to extinction, counting the wonders of the world, and counting our way back to the balance we need to save the world from climate destruction. Filled with a sense of grief and sorrow, COUNT also offers the hope that future generations will be able to live on a healthy planet.

The book will be for sale at the museum bookstore on April 30, and Martínez will sign books after the reading.

Soundscapes of the Southwest Features Tim Hernandez

When: Friday, April 28, 7:15 p.m.

Where: University of Arizona, Integrated Learning Center, Room ILC 130, 1500 E. University Blvd., Tucson

As part of the Southwest Center Spring 2023 Lecture Series “Soundscape of the Southwest”, author Tim Hernandez and singer/songwriter Ana Saldaña will present a poetic and musical performance, “Searching for the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.”

This presentation is part of the Plane Crash Project, which centers around the famous 1948 accident in Los Gatos Canyon, Fresno County, which took the lives of 32 passengers, 28 who were “Mexican Nationals.” The pilot, first officer, stewardess and an immigration official who were white received burials in their hometowns. The Mexicans — many of whom were part of the bracero program and working in the U.S. legally — were buried in a mass grave in Fresno, with a small plaque bearing none of their names.

This is the same crash made famous by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman, in the song “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (The Deportee Song),” which has been recorded by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger

Tim Hernandez wrote the book All They Will Call You, in which he combines years of painstaking investigative research and masterful storytelling. The author weaves a captivating narrative from testimony, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, reconstructing the incident and the lives behind the legendary song. The book will be available for purchase at the event.

The University of Arizona Press